Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
Ar hyn of bryd mae'r cynnwys hwn ar gael yn Saesneg yn unig.
hyrwyddo a dathlu cerddoriaeth Cymru
promoting and celebrating the music of Wales
+44 (0)29 2063 5640
Richard Elfyn Jones
As he celebrates his 80th birthday, we reflect on the varied career of a much loved composer, organist, conductor and academic
More than once Richard Elfyn Jones has been described as one of Wales’s most versatile musicians and this may have given the impression of a somewhat checkered career. It is true that the effect of spreading one’s talent may have the danger of weakening primary creative endeavours, as, in this case, being a composer. However, an important core activity has given him the advantage of professional stability, namely as a university lecturer. Throughout his 40-year teaching career at Cardiff University Jones has balanced many responsibilities and skills: concert organist; lecturer in a very wide range of musical disciplines - notably as head of composition following Alun Hoddinott’s retirement; choral and orchestral conductor; choir trainer; researcher; long-standing adjudicator at the National Eisteddfod; international examiner for the London College of Music; adviser and consultant for music in various media in Wales and internationally; and last but not least, composer in many genres.
Jones's anthem Adam’s Fall was broadcast to an audience of 140 million listeners from King’s College Cambridge Choir’s Christmas Eve service in 2017.
The Organist
When he was very young and acting as assistant organist at Bangor Cathedral Jones's success in winning the Limpus Prize for gaining the highest marks in the Fellowship Examinations of the Royal College of Organists was a serendipitous event which led to a career as a concert organist. Between 1971 and the end of the century he was a frequent recitalist on BBC Radio 3. Some of the more prestigious recitals were on historic organs like the ones at Ottobeuren and Ochsenhausen Abbeys in Bavaria. As an accompanist in large scale choral concerts he performed often at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1976 his recording for Decca/ARGO of John Stanley’s Organ Voluntaries brought him to further prominence.
The Conductor
Jones was a postgraduate student at King’s College, Cambridge and it was here that his passion for all things choral originated. He was conductor of the Cardiff Polyphonic Choir for 15 years, and was one of the founders of HTV’s Cardiff Festival of Choirs in the late 1970s. In this Festival during the 1980s his role as chorus master for large choral forces in major works like the Verdi Requiem and Bach’s B Minor Mass saw happy collaborations with distinguished guest conductors like Sir Colin Davis, Sir Charles Groves, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Roger Norrington and also (somewhat improbably) Sir John Eliot Gardner, who was regarded as especially influential.
Although he was a semi-finalist in the Guido Cantelli International Competition for Orchestral Conductors in 1980 Jones's career as an orchestral conductor was unfulfilled in favour of developing his academic work, which resulted in four books on 20th-century music and aesthetics (including 'The Early Operas of Michael Tippett’, Mellen Press, 1996) and a plethora of papers and a book on aspects of metaphysical aesthetics derived from American Process theology (see his ‘Music and the Numinous’, Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, 2007).
The Composer
As his academic career developed, composition has come more to the fore. Somewhat by chance Jones was commissioned to provide music for a large-scale historical series produced for American Public Service Broadcasting, Timeline (1989). This led to another large music commission for a prominent and prophetic environmental series called After the Warming (1990) also for American PBS. This brought him to prominence as a composer for the media. In 1996 he was appointed as a part-time Classical Music Adviser for S4C, in which role he was able to support the careers of a number of talented Welsh artists like Bryn Terfel, Rebecca Evans, Katherine Jenkins, Llyr Williams and others. As a member of the European Broadcasting Union’s Music Panel he was able to promote programming from Wales and Welsh talent generally outside the domestic platform.
In recent years, and especially after his retirement, Jones’s work as a composer has flourished, and especially in the genre of short choral pieces, which have been published by Encore Publications and which have been widely performed. His anthem Adam’s Fall was broadcast to an audience of 140 million listeners from King’s College Cambridge Choir’s famous Christmas Eve service in 2017 and this helped to introduce his choral music specifically to American choirs and audiences. Some years previously there were two substantial works for soloists, choir and orchestra, namely Goroesiad Cenedl (2000) and In David’s Land (2006) both of which celebrated on a large scale the ‘Welsh experience’ over many centuries.
Writing for orchestra has not featured all that prominently despite the success of the Brangwyn Festival Overure (1981), praised by the Sunday Times (Felix Aprahamian) as “a Proms must if not heard before on the South Bank”. Recently Christopher Williams has recorded all of Jones’s piano music under the title Lures for Feeling (Willowhayne Records). This has been well received nationally and internationally. Musical Opinion’s review (October 2024) points out that “there is a philosophical background to much of Richard Elfyn Jones’s music,” (a reference to how ideas about Whiteheadian ‘process’ seem to permeate, consciously or unconsciously, the composer’s approach). The review echoes much that has been said about Jones’s music in the past, namely that “there is a directness of utterance that betokens a natural composer.” The reviewer writes that Christopher Williams’s splendid playing “should go a long way in ensuring these works take their rightful place in the British piano music repertoire... the recent Ukraine Threnody and Fantasy Evocations are particularly fine works.” The pieces entitled Fantasy Evocations are unusual since they feed off excerpts from medieval music (notably by Matteo da Perugia and Guillaume de Machaut). In these fantasy pieces we find a florid and texturally uninhibited psychological gloss on archaic models from many centuries ago, but represented afresh in a piquantly modern guise.
Richard Elfyn Jones yn 2019
Jones's choral music is featured on two Tŷ Cerdd releases.
The recently released CD recording of Jones's piano works performed by Christopher Williams has been well received by critics. Musical Opinion remarked, “there is a directness of utterance that betokens a natural composer.”